For those who want to know, non-fiction here includes all the numerical call numbers, as well as the biographies. It does not by default discriminate among material types. The new functionality is seamlessly integrated with the RSS and printable views. It will occasionally (very rarely) return false results because some fiction items happen to have three digits in their call number.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

I've written previously—including illustrated how-to's—about resource lists in our catalog. Now I just want to point out a cool list that Lisa created for our extensive collection of graphic novels. Because of the quirks of our cataloging system, it's not incredibly obvious how to generate such a list, but now you'll always be able to find one among the Resource Lists in our catalog or from the "Teens" section of our website.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

As of August 1, 2007 we are no longer offering Netlibrary Downloadable Audio Books.

Scranton Memorial Library in Madison apparently still subscribes to this service, however, and as far as we know, you do not need to be a Madison patron to sign up, though you will probably need to have an active CT library card.

Friday, July 27, 2007

The new arrivals page on our website just got a whole notch more accessible: Now you can easily get our customized new arrival alerts by email. Behind the scenes it's RSS, but knowing that many of our patrons are unfamiliar with RSS, we've added a button that takes you right to RssFwd.com, a service (mentioned in an earlier post) that converts RSS to email.

Clicking the button does most of the work for you. In particular it preloads the subscription page with the currect URL for your customized feed. The only thing you'll need to do is type in your email address and subscribe. If it's the first time you use RssFwd, you will also have to respond to a confirmation email that they'll send to you automatically.

Incidentally, don't worry if you don't see anything in your email for a few days. RssFwd will only start sending your emails when there is new content on our site. Typically we update the new arrivals twice a week.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Here's a little dalliance into the world of digital video. The clip below comes from a 1986 spoof by Gary Cummings, the late director of Henry Carter Hull, who stars as "Bull Ramsey" himself. You'll see footage of our old digs plus a real card catalog! (That's only twenty years ago!) And you might yet run into one of the stars on our premises!